(Image description: A cloudy sky with reflecting sunrise light is seen through tall trees. Photo was taken by Stasha Huntingford.)

A Year of Sacred Attendance #tenderyear

Question.

We are nearing the end of #100loveletters.

Would you like to do another thing after that?

This was the question Nathan Fawaz posed to me, and the answer was an easy and enthusiastic “yes!”

The 100 Love Letters project has been transformative for me – it has been a thread of connection back to myself during a summer that included too much travel, too much stress, too much emotional upheaval, too much existential dread. The love letters were a daily reminder to sit down and breathe into a space of compassionate self-awareness. The letters were permission to take time, even five minutes at the end of the day, to love myself in the middle of the hard weeks and the bad weeks and the overwhelming weeks. They built space into my day, and gave me new tools for self-care and new methods for engaging my narrative. (You can find the posts related to this project here, and the PDF will be added to this section as well.)

The 100 Love Letters project was also an opportunity to build community, and I have appreciated the new friends I’ve made as a result of the project, the connections that have grown and strengthened as we witness and support and encourage each other through the process.

The 100 Love Letters project will continue on in various iterations – Nathan will be presenting their 101st letter at an event on October 14 (you can find out more about that event here), and I will be putting together a PDF that will be available for free download on my website, with prompts, encouragement, and a “how-to” section. (I’ll still be available to support anyone who started the project on a different day, too. You can always email me or find me on Facebook or Instagram!) I’m even working on a book proposal about the project!

But the 100 Love Letters project, in its original form, is coming to an end today, September 29. It’s 100 days since we launched at the beginning of the summer, and it has been a beautiful journey. It’s time for those of us who started our 100 days a season ago to shift into something else.

If you want to shift with me, consider this an invitation to a Year of Sacred Attendance.

This project, co-created by Nathan, Stasha, and myself, is that ‘other thing’ that was gestured into being with Nathan’s question. I think it will be amazing.

We started from another of Nathan’s ideas. They had said, “One thing that is coming up for me is the idea of attention, attendance.”

It resonated.

Being present with ourselves, attending, bringing attention, and tending to ourselves – that’s one of the most powerful elements of the love letter project. We each wanted to maintain that spacious, gracious sense of intentional, compassionate attendance. And we wanted to push gently against the edges of other aspects of our lives that could benefit from this kind of compassionate, intentional, regular tending.

Around Stasha’s kitchen table, the framework for a yearlong project coalesced. It was, and is, a collaborative project generated by the powerful narrative spellwork of the three of us, but we remain individuals within the project and we are so excited to share the project with as many of you as want to join.

The Year of Sacred Attendance will run from October 1, 2017 to September 30, 2018.

Each day of the week has a unique focus. You can participate in all of them, or pick and choose the ones that resonate for you. We will be using #tenderyear for every post related to the project, with daily tags as well (to make it easier for folks to find each other on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter).

Sunday

Meditation to Challenge the Binaries. #challengethebinary

Meditation is a flexible form here – the goal of this day is to invite participants to think about binaries, opposites, exceptions, and subversions. Think of Venn Diagrams, exceptions that subvert the rule, grey areas that provide productive space for expanding and exploring our narratives. On Sundays, we look at The Normal and The Other, and we grapple with that. We look at The Thing and The Opposite of The Thing. You can engage with this focus through art, writing, or any other method that helps you dig into the topic.

Monday

Attending to the Questions. #questioneverything

A significant focus of this project is inviting and facilitating compassionate self-awareness. You can ask yourself whatever questions feel right for you – the focus of Monday is simply to take time to ask yourself how things are going. If you’re not sure what to ask, here are some sample questions, and you can answer whichever feel right for you. Not everyone participating in this project will be working on creative projects, and not everyone will feel comfortable with a goal of presence – trauma is a real factor in many of our lives, and can make presence a real challenge. These are just a place to start:

What are you creating?

What do you need?

Do you feel present?

Could you try something different?

What are you wondering about?

Tuesday

Love Letter #100loveletters

We wanted to keep the focus on self-compassion, self-acceptance, self-care, and self-love. The 100 Love Letters project continues on in the Tuesday focus.

Wednesday

Drop Into A Moment #wednesdaymoments

Find a moment to fully experience. This focus is about sensory awareness, mindfulness, presence, and about paying attention to our lives. You can participate in this through art, writing, photography, or simply pausing to observe yourself as a physical being within a physical world.

Thursday

As Above So Below #fiveelements

Thursday’s focus builds on the physical presence of Wednesday, and is about connecting to the world around you.

Friday

Reflection #fridayreflections

Friday’s focus can take so many forms. Reflect on your week, reflect on your relationships, post a selfie, take a picture of a reflective surface – the beautiful thing about reflection is the many ways it can be interpreted.

Saturday

Affirmation #saturdayaffirmations

Affirmations for yourself, for your communities, for the world. What do you need to hear? What do you need to affirm for yourself or for your people?

The #tenderyear project is open to anyone to participate, and participation can happen online or offline. Participating online can happen privately in messages or between friends, or publicly. We will be using the #dailypractices and #tenderyear hashtags throughout the posts.

There is an email list, similar to the one that was available for the #100loveletters project. You can sign up here. I’ll be sending out mostly-weekly emails with prompts, links to blog posts, interviews with participants, and encouragement and support. There will also probably be give-aways, like the handwritten letters that were sent out to Love Letters participants.

To give you a sense of the what and why and who behind this project, here is a mini roundtable with the co-creators.

How did this project start?

Stasha – For me the 100 love letters made sense as resistance to oppression, and as a lifesaving intervention. When Nathan and Tiffany also participated in the 100 love letters, it opened up a space in my heart. I was able to cheer on their resistance and to witness them both weaving powerful magic in inspiring their communities. I think after feeling that daily magic, all of us knew that sharing and sustaining this magic is vital. Loving ourselves is a revolutionary act, supporting each other with this even more so. I spent so much of my life stigmatizing parts of me that had been shamed by society, I didn’t survive 37 years to live in shame. I survived by transforming my pain into empathy and learning. This project assists me in that alchemy, a most sacred healing magic.

Nathan – Somewhere between letter sixty and letter seventy-five, I noticed this sensation within me… the sensation had been there since the very first letter, really, but it took me a while before I could identify it… anyway, I noticed this sense of space. That’s the best word I have to describe it. This sense of space. And, at the same time, I really began enjoying in the community that was emerging as part of #100loveletters. As I got closer and closer to letter 100, I found myself wondering what I could do to help support the spaciousness I was just starting to find for myself. And how can I help nourish this connectedness I was observing.

Tiffany – Just like the #100loveletters project started with a “Yes! Can I do that too?” in response to Stasha’s original post about her project, this new project starts, for me, with a “Yes! Can I do that too?” in response to Nathan’s “Would you like to do another thing?” In both cases, I felt like I was being gifted a new tool to expand my self-care practice, my community care practice, and to share with the individuals and groups that I work with.

Stasha said, “Loving ourselves is a revolutionary act, supporting each other even more so,” and Nathan said, “[What can I] do to help support the spaciousness I was just starting to find for myself, and how can I help nourish this connectedness I was observing.”

These two origin stories for the project echo and overlap with my own – this project, for me, starts with trying to open up space for self-love and self-compassion, for myself and for the people around me, and to support and foster connectedness and love within my communities. It fits so perfectly with the work I want to do as a self-care and narrative coach, it feels like a gift. Two gifts! (Which is totes a double entendre because I am referring both to the two projects AND the two people. Clever!)

What do you find exciting about this project?

Stasha – Everything. The sacred belonging and acceptance that I already feel is amazing. I love working with people who understand how tenderness can bring down oppressive systems. What could be more radical than tending love in this world? Already we have done so much by creating a public space where we celebrate insanity as necessary for problem solving and community building. We have made a place that includes our hearts, our fears, our bodies, our chronic illnesses, our genders, our minds, our ptsd, our communities, our joy, and our pain. One of the most painful things about participating in groups, is that often parts of me are not welcome. This project allows me to participate as a whole person, which helps me nurture love.

Nathan – Everything. I am excited by its potential for compassion, and self-compassion. I am excited about its accessibility. I am excited to make this commitment in community, both online and in person. I’m excited for the container of this project. And I am curious to see what it will hold.

Tiffany – I am excited by the idea of making space for ritual and for the sacred in my life. I think it’s possible to engage with this project without ever engaging with any kind of spirituality or sense of the sacred, and that would be totally valid, but for me… I have been writing about, talking about, thinking about, and longing for a sense of ritual and connection for a long time. But I haven’t done the work to create space for ritual in my life – I’m always too busy, I’m always too scared of doing it wrong. I love that this project is flexible, expansive, and that it offers opportunities for sacred ritual but also for goofiness and lightness. And, a year is a long time. I’m excited about the opportunity to go through the first exciting month or two, and then the drudgery when it gets old and weighs more, and then the renewal when I find the excitement again. A year is long enough to cycle through a few times, and I’m really looking forward to that. I’m looking forward to helping others through that cycling, too. That’s been one of the most rewarding things for me about the love letters project.

Who would you like to see participating in this project?

Stasha – Honestly, I think we all need this kind of love in our lives. I hope to model a year long spell of mindful intent, and learn from others as I go.

Nathan – I am interested in anyone participating in this project who is drawn to participation. There is no outcome. No certificate. It’s a process. Mostly gentle and generative and sometimes takes the long way to get to gentle.

I am most interested to see who will find themselves a small home in the space of this project. Who will tend toward it.

Tiffany – I would really like to see anyone who feels lonely, alienated from their own heart, scared to connect with themselves, struggling with shame and anxiety and fear of failure and fear of success – I would like all the queerdos and weirdos and sad pandas to find this project and find community and support and a way to connect back to themselves, to centre themselves in their stories, to renew themselves through this year of attendance with themselves.

What are you hoping to get out of this project?

Stasha – I am working on the theme of listening for this project. I struggle with interrrupting people, and asking rapid fire questions without listening to the answers. I work on this because I want to be more respectful of other people, and I want to learn from them. I value being listened to, and I want to give others the same gift. This work will help me to survive in an oppressive world. It also improves the world by focusing on connection, and trying to understand the world by changing it. I believe that the focus on how we are part of the earth, is vital in these times where that connection is denied. The practice of tending must be tended, us doing that together is very powerful.

Nathan – I am hoping that through this project, and the gentle tending of it, that my own rhythms, interests, way of dreaming, way of loving, further emerge into the space that they need.

I am curious to see what will happen.

Tiffany – One million new followers. Just kidding! Not totally kidding. I am hoping to build my base with this project, by offering support and resources and encouragement. But I am also hoping to find space for myself within the project. I want to find that sacred ritual.

This is the first part of a Patreon reward post series for Dylan. At the $10/month support level, I’ll write you a post on the topic of your choice for your birthday, too! Blog posts are available one week early for patrons at any support level.

I met Dylan in one of the first courses I took in my university career. They were smart, insightful, and hella intimidating. It has been an honour to get to know them over the last eight years, and I consider them one of my best friends. We are working on an ongoing project this year – a duoethnography on the topic of the experience of being non-binary in binary-gendered contexts. It’s pretty cool, and we even presenting a paper on one segment of our research at the Society for the Study of Social Problems conference in August! (I’ll be posting the presentation on my Patreon later this month.)

When I asked Dylan what topic they would like me to tackle for their birthday month post this year, this is what they said:

“I’m so tired and stretched thin across multiple projects so I apologize if this is not helpful. It’s kind of hilarious that this is about self-care and I’m not really doing awesome on that front atm. I was thinking about self-care as it relates to quitting because I’ve made a number of difficult changes over the past couple of years that required working through these ideas. I gave up on many hobbies as a kid because I didn’t want to face the horrible anxiety that came with pursuing hobbies: fear of public failure or embarrassment, fear and awkwardness of interacting with new people… I started to think of myself negatively as a quitter and that has nagged at me as an adult such that I have a difficult time quitting or changing directions once I set myself onto a path. But quitting can be such a vital part of self-care because sometimes we do need to change directions or leave to protect ourselves.”

They sent me the topic on August 9th. In the time since, I’ve sent them multiple messages apologizing for the fact that it’s not done yet. We’re now halfway through September, and their birthday month is in August, and the post is still not up.

I started, restarted, outlined, re-outlined, mind-mapped, doodled, wrote, erased, rewrote, gave up on, came back to, gave up on again, and finally sat down to actually write this post in earnest. And then stopped again. And then came back.

It was an interesting intersection of content and context – writing about quitting, and constantly experiencing the overwhelming urge to quit.

There were lessons for me in both the content and the context, and that is one of the most exciting and encouraging things about this process. Even in a topic that I feel deeply familiar with (the concept of quitting and self-care is one I’ve already given a lot of thought to, particularly as it relates to my divorce and to the times when quitting has been the best self-care available to me), I found that there are new layers to explore and new learnings to uncover.

It was also interesting to realize that my own hang-ups about quitting – my fear and shame, the narratives I’ve internalized – are still so real, so visceral, and such strong influences on my behaviour.

And, maybe most interesting for my self-care practice and my work as a self-care coach, I started to learn how to recognize when the urge to quit in one area is actually an indicator of unmet needs in other areas. Although my challenges and new learnings in the area of “quitting and self-care” were real, I have also realized that I just need time for posts to marinate. The pressure I was putting on myself to generate the post in a short amount of time – I didn’t get back from presenting at a conference in Montreal until August 21, and I planned to leave for Costa Rica on the 27th – contributed significantly to my anxiety and my strong desire to quit. I didn’t actually want to quit – I love writing these posts! – but I needed more time. That unmet need was felt as a desire to quit.

As a result of this learning, I’m going to change the wording of this reward tier on Patreon, and have these posts written within six weeks of receiving a patron’s birthday-month topic.

I initially approached the topic by making a mind-map about quitting. I was interested in who quits, how they quit, what they quit, why they quit, and why they don’t quit. I’ve taken that original work and expanded on it in specific categories. Narratives of Quitting addresses Who and How, Factors Influencing Quitting addresses How and Why and Why Not, The Things We Quit addresses What, and Self-Care for Quitters addresses the self-care part of the post. A final section of Reflections caps it off. Since this post turned into a bit of a monster, I’m breaking it into multiple posts. (Part two, Factors Influencing Quitting, is up on the Patreon today.)

Narratives of Quitting

Who and how blended into a series of Narratives of Quitting. These are foundational stories that help organize our understanding of what it means to quit something, and to be someone who quits something. Which of these narratives fit us at any given time, and regarding any particular act of quitting, can shift and change according to the other narratives we’re working within. For example, it’s hard to maintain a Triumphant Quitter narrative when we’re dealing with depression or ongoing anxiety, even if that narrative would otherwise fit. And we reject some narratives out of fear of the consequences – for example, many of us would deny a Resentful Quitter narrative because of the shame attached to it, even if it more accurately reflects our experience.

Here is my incomplete list of Narratives of Quitting.

The Triumphant Quitter

This is the most acceptable narrative of quitting. In this story, the protagonist (the quitter) realizes that something is not working in their lives – particularly something big, like a relationship, or a career – and they quit. Quitting solves the problem, and after they quit, they are happier, more wholehearted, and more fulfilled.

This doesn’t mean it’s always easy for the Triumphant Quitter. Often the Triumphant Quitter is an Ambivalent Quitter who has made it through to some stability after the transition following whatever they quit. And it often takes time to get to the awareness and confidence to make the choice to quit.

The Repentant Quitter

This narrative is also fairly well-accepted. In this story, the protagonist realizes that something is not working in their lives, but misidentifies the cause. They thought it was the job, or the relationship, but really is was something else – usually themselves. The repentant quitter regrets their decision to quit, and goes through a process of reflection, growth, and learning, often having to make amends (internally or externally) for having quit.

The Repentant Quitter may be performing, rather than actually feeling, repentance – especially in instances where what they’ve quit doesn’t make sense to the people around them. Leaving the “perfect” job (because it was burning them out), leaving the “perfect” relationship (despite toxic dynamics not visible to people outside the relationship) or getting divorced as a religious person, abandoning a “beloved” hobby (that has ceased to be nourishing and has become anxiety-provoking) – all of these instances of quitting can be met with skepticism and criticism, and an “appropriate” amount of repentance and self-blame can mitigate some of that social pressure.

Other times, the Repentant Quitter really does go through a process of reflection, learning, and growth. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes – quitting too soon, quitting the wrong thing – and there is nothing shameful or bad about realizing it and owning that part of our story.

The Ambivalent Quitter

This narrative is much less accepted, even though I think it is the most common. We don’t know what to do with ambivalent quitters, and stories of ambivalent quitting are often silenced and pressured into more acceptable narratives of triumph or repentance. In this story, the protagonist either doesn’t know exactly what’s wrong but quits anyway, or they don’t end up feeling happier, more wholehearted, or fulfilled after they quit.

They quit the relationship, for example, and it was the right choice for them but now they are experiencing financial hardship. They may regret the fallout of their decision without regretting the decision. The ambivalent quitter highlights the ways in which individual choices exist within larger structural frameworks, and their ambivalence challenges the individualist ideals of contemporary neoliberal late capitalism.

They took control of their lives and made a choice to quit, but it didn’t fix everything. Their narrative introduces uncomfortable tension into our understandings of personal agency, self-awareness, even self-care.

The Reluctant Quitter

There are a few different versions of the Reluctant Quitter, and in each of them, the protagonist resists or hesitates before quitting.

In one story, the protagonist is afraid to quit despite their discomfort with the situation. The outcome is unknown, and the protagonist is worried about what will happen if they quit, or they are maintaining hope that the situation will improve and they won’t need to quit. A lot of us spend a lot of time in this story, weighing our options, feeling uncomfortable but not being able to take the step and actually quit.

In another story, the protagonist doesn’t want to quit but does not have the resources to keep going – internal, external, or social.

And in another story of the Reluctant Quitter, the protagonist is doing something that harms or makes someone else uncomfortable but they don’t want to stop it even after being told about the impacts of their actions. Many of us have been in this story, and the shame of it often causes us to reject this story and deny that it happened. We rewrite our stories to either erase our reluctance, or deny the discomfort of the other person.

The Resentful Quitter

In this story, the protagonist is forced to quit. This is often due to a lack of resources – quitting school because of lack of funding, quitting a beloved hobby because of lack of time or money, quitting a relationship because of lack of reciprocity, quitting a job or hobby because of a lack of energy after chronic illness or disability. There are so many different types of resources and any scarcity can force us to quit something we love or are committed to.

Like the Ambivalent Quitter, the Resentful Quitter is not a particularly welcome narrative. The Resentful Quitter challenges the idea that if we think positively, we can manifest the resources we need. The Resentful Quitter challenges the idea that “everything happens for a reason” and that our lives inevitably move in an upward spiral. Resentful Quitters also challenge the idea of the ever-effective bootstrapping out of hardship.

The Resentful Quitter makes people uncomfortable.

There is another Resentful Quitter story, where the protagonist is forced to quit because their actions are causing harm and they are stopped. When they have access to power, they can try (or succeed) in retaliating against the people who forced them to quit what they were doing before. This version of the Resentful Quitter also makes people uncomfortable.

The Preemptive Quitter

This is the story that we socially love to hate. In this story, the protagonist quits before it gets awful. They’re afraid – of failure, of mockery, of pain, of missed chances. They’re lonely, or isolated, or they see the potential for a negative outcome and they bail before it happens. There is a lot of shame attached to this story, and the Preemptive Quitter is rarely praised for having foresight and self-awareness, or comforted and met with empathy for dealing with fear and anxiety. Instead, the Preemptive Quitter is criticized for “giving up too easily.” Find yourself in the Preemptive Quitter story too often (and sometimes once is all it takes) and suddenly your story becomes that of…

The Weak-Willed Quitter

In this story, the protagonist is too “weak” or “lazy” to keep going. I don’t actually believe that this story is often true, because it doesn’t have nearly enough compassion or awareness. In this story, quitting is not a factor of circumstance, or access to resources, or self-awareness – no. In this story, quitting is a personal failing, a character flaw, a punishable offence.

The spectre of the Weak-Willed Quitter looms behind every other quitter narrative. Even the Triumphant Quitter can be tripped up by this narrative. When something goes wrong, even if it’s unrelated to what we quit, there is the temptation to look back at paths we’ve abandoned, imagine them going in more productive directions than where we find ourselves now, and retroactively label ourselves too weak or lazy or foolish for having quit.

Because late capitalism values labour and productivity over everything other than profit, quitting – ceasing our labour and changing our productive focus – is always fraught. Even when it’s the right choice, it’s a choice loaded with the potential to fall off into this hurtful, harmful Weak-Willed Quitter narrative.

Part Two will continue this exploration of quitting, examining the factors that influence when/how/why/whether we quit something.

This course is for the heartbroken, the burnt out, the sad and the afraid. It is a course for bruised and bleeding hearts. It was not originally supposed to be – when I mapped out year of content, Autumn was always going to be emotional self-care, but I had intended a more lighthearted course. But the world, in the 10 months between designing the year of courses and running this course, has turned more overtly and explicitly brutal. There are a lot of broken hearts in my community.

We are grieving, collectively, for what feels like the loss of our future. Climate change, far-right ideologies, economic instability, and the chaos that existential dread can create within relationships – so many of us are dealing with so much. Loss, and the loss of hope, and the loss of joy, and the loss of stable ground under our feet.

Six weeks is not long enough to heal a broken heart, transform a trauma into something bearable, refill the cup or relight the candle that’s been burned out. Six weeks is certainly not long enough to address the great grief of climate change, political upheaval, economic collapse. So this course is not about healing our collective, or our individual, grief.

Instead, this course is about feeling our way into the grief, loss, trauma, and heartbreak so that we can do the long work of healing individually and collectively over the next months and years. The goal of this course is to offer tools and skills and a safe space for talking about how we begin to recover. How we find our way back to ourselves, so that we can find our way back to community, so that we can find our way back to hope.

This world needs us.

Those of us who have broken open and broken down in response to the pain in the world and to the losses in our own lives – our empathy and sensitivity is needed. Self-care and community care and deeply linked, and sustainable self-care is only ever the result of awareness, compassion, and intention in our actions. Those of us who feel deeply and who are struggling right now have already been practicing emergency self-care. That’s how we got here, searching for tools and answers and skills. We already have the ability to bring awareness and compassion and intention to the self-care that we practice individually and that we model and share within our communities.

My goal for this course is to help foster that awareness, compassion, and intentionality in your self-care practice. To give you a few new tools and a solid base of support and scaffolding to continue healing, growing, and renewing yourself.

The course has two sections.

In the first three weeks, we will work on mapping out our current emotional state, identifying our emotional needs, and finding the edges of our remaining positive emotions. For many of us, heartbreak, trauma, and burnout cut us off from our feelings of joy, hope, and self-efficacy (our belief that we can make positive changes within our own lives). The first three weeks will focus on connecting back to those feelings, without demanding that we “stay positive” or find the “silver lining.”

In the second three weeks, once we’ve established a thread of connection back to our joy, hope, and self-efficacy, we’ll start working on recognizing and responding to the needs that originate in our feelings of loss, heartbreak, trauma, and grief.

The course will use three core strategies:

Narrative – If you’ve taken any of my previous courses, worked with me one-on-one, attended my workshops, or read my writing, this one won’t come as a shock. Narrative therapy is my jam. I believe that using narrative – understanding our lives through metaphors of story, seeing ourselves as the protagonists of our own stories, and giving ourselves the space to tell our own stories – can be life changing. We will definitely be talking about narratives of loss, grief, heartbreak, and healing in this course.

Mindfulness – The self-awareness and compassion piece of the self-care puzzle requires that we spend some time being present with ourselves, observing what’s happening and what we’re thinking, feeling, and experiencing, without judging ourselves for it. In order to tell our stories effectively, we need to know what we’re trying to tell. That’s the mindfulness piece.

Gamefulness – This one is new to my courses, and I’m excited about it. We’ll be using some of Jane McGonigal’s research into how “living gamefully” can facilitate healing and growth, and trying out some of the games, challenges, and exercises from her book SuperBetter.

Over the six weeks, you’ll develop stronger self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-care skills.

(This post was available on my Patreon last week. If you’d like to get access to posts early, consider supporting me!)

In August, I asked my Facebook community – Where do you find hope in media lately?

I asked the question because hope has been on my mind. Or rather, the lack of hope. The need for hope. The challenge and pain of trying to hope in a world that seems so soaked in dystopia and pain and fear and hate.

Hope, hopefulness, hopelessness. What hope is, and what it isn’t, and what it does and doesn’t do for us.

I’ve been thinking about reading Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone’s Active Hope but so far it remains just a thought. Hope feels like a necessary and dangerous topic, an exposed nerve for so many of us in the current political, social, and economic climate. (On this note, I am considering attending this retreat in October, recommended by the same person who recommended the book to me. I haven’t figured out the finances, but if you have $250 and can be in Alberta and want to attend, let me know and we can do a retreat together!)

For a while now, I have felt deeply hopeless, hopeless down to my bones. I have been swimming in existential dread. I struggle to see a way forward for humanity – at all times, I think we’ve overstepped and overstayed, embraced a political and economic framework that is fundamentally unsustainable, and supported it with a social framework that isolates and harms so many people, and in the dark times, I think there’s no way back. I have felt, for a while now, that the end of the road is close.

I have handled that deep hopelessness by holding onto smaller hopes. I’ve found a metaphor that works for me, based on that idea of the road – I think that there’s value in walking to the end of the road together. Doing it intentionally. Doing it with self-awareness and with compassion. I think that there is something powerful and meaningful and hopeful about the idea that we can offer whatever comfort and self-care and community care and survival strategies we can, despite the end of the road looming. I feel sad for the world and for all our unmeetable potential, crushed under a drive towards hierarchy and violence and exploitation. But I also think that we can do what we can, with what we have, for as long as we are able, and that’s worth continuing on for. That’s the safety net that keeps me from falling off the cliff.

I am also wary of any self-help advice that includes weaponized positivity – the idea that if you aren’t positive enough, don’t look for the positive, don’t find the silver lining, then you’re at fault for your situation – and I think hope falls into that category all too often. I don’t want to contribute to that body of work that constitutes a vast and crushing arsenal of weaponized positivity. I am not here to tell you that you just need to hope – just need to vibe higher, think brighter, seek the light. Nope. In my heart of hearts, I think we’re screwed. And even if we aren’t, the fear and the pain and the hopelessness – it’s real. It’s so real.

And I also believe that when the car is spinning out, it helps to look for the clear road rather than the trees. I think that we will have better luck taking on the role of death doula for a dying species if we find some way to hope within that. If we find some clear road to aim for – some awareness, some intention, some compassion, to bring to this critical work of loving ourselves and each other through this time.

So, I do believe that there is value in curating our thoughts, words, and media intake. Not in demanding that we always ‘think positive’ or find the silver lining, but in recognizing when we need an infusion of hope, joy, humour, or encouragement and when we notice the need, seeking those things out.

And so, for those moments when you need to find some hope, here are a whole bunch of suggestions from fellow travelers, in some cases paraphrased and edited. (With additional links added by me in the brackets, in case you’re like me and like to read reviews before you invest in any media.)

Where do you find hope in media lately?

Jim: Muppet movies. The theme of pretty much all the old Muppet movies is, “we can achieve our dreams, if we work together.”

Samantha: Steven Universe. It validates and celebrates everyone. Poly, straight, Bi-Gender, people with trauma…everyone. And everyone gets to be a hero.

Bob’s Burgers. It’s a show about good people and while they’re weird and the world can be cruel to them, they are ultimately resilient because they have each other.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl – It’s just madcap fun. With a diverse cast and some serious heart. It’s not a new way forward for the medium but it never fails to make me smile.

Ms Marvel – Teenage Muslim-American gets super powers and then has to balance heroics with family life? It’s basically the end point of the Spider-Man formula. Really, really good.

The Adventure Zone – a D&D podcast about three adventurers. It’s a humour-based show but grows into so much more. And while the early goings can be rough, they get very good at representation and combatting problematic tropes.

Rose Buddies – a Bachelor Fancast. While I will never ever watch The Bachelor family of products, there’s something about two people who love it and love each other that is oddly fulfilling. They engage with the problematic elements and it might not be for everyone but it’s my second favourite podcast.

There are also lots of articles about why Bob’s Burgers is brilliant, but I love this one from Decider about why Tina, Gene and Louise are the feminist role models we need.

Samantha’s picks are all, honestly, really fantastic and I had a great time finding articles about them.

This one about Squirrel Girl shares the same enthusiasm I had for the comic when I first discovered it.

And G. Willow Wilson, who created the new Ms. Marvel, is my hero. I saw her speak at Mount Royal in Calgary, and her quote “There is not always a way out, but there is always a way forward” became the cornerstone of my coaching practice. This article about Kamala Khan is fantastic.

This post about why Adventure Zone is fantastic is also great, but watch out for spoilers!)

Katie: Not conventional media, but ASMR roleplay videos on YouTube have been an effective way for me to escape the existential dread.

Rick and Morty for helping me laugh through the fear and pain.

(According to The Nerdist, the opening premise of Rick and Morty is “like Sliders but good” and that’s some high praise in my secret Sliders-loving heart.)

Richelle: Dogspotting and We Rate Dogs. So many good doggos, and the fact that there are beings on this planet that are beacons of joy and love and floof who continue to be happy gives me hope. Even if I’m ready to give up on the human race, there are adorable dogs who will never bring about the apocalypse.

(This post about how doggo memes can teach us about consent and inclusion is one of the most hopeful and encouraging I’ve read in a while.)

Jon: Video games can be a source of hope too (depending on the game). Often the stories can be hopeful (like a lot of the Lego games, games about rebuilding after an apocalypse, some of the final fantasy games). Even just the concept of games can build hope, though. You are presented with a challenge. To get over the challenge you have to have hope that it’s possible. You work at it and eventually you make it through.

Video games are often overlooked when it comes to media; they’re written off as a quark of a particular sub-culture that a lot of us shy away from (sometimes for good reason). I’m really glad to see some of the most recent game designers come out to make games important to them (and us), though. They’re definitely artists and sometimes they create truly hope-inspiring pieces.

Seeing the work that some game designers pull off despite the general toxic nature of gamer-culture also gives me a lot of hope.

(Jon suggests Never Alone as one of his favourite examples of hopeful games. And I have been reading SuperBetter by Jane McGonigal, which is all about how game playing can increase resilience. I recommend both the book and the app. I’ve also been tinkering with a blog post about videogames and self-care for about six months, so, someday that’ll happen. Someday. Haha. *headdesk*)

Andrea: Body positive Instagram. Tess Holiday, queenkim_nyakimm, fat women of colour, curvy_curvy_cosplayers, curvycampbell, and gabifresh. I haven’t seen a lot of disability inclusivity in these BUT most are on their game with racial and body shape diversity. Using Instagram for body positivity is a very new thing for me, tbh. It was mostly food, travel, and protesting. Not by any rule but I think mine started with Tess Holiday and I was like “oooohhhh this is such an emotionally productive way to use Instagram.”

And I find hope in radical books that destabilize systems of oppression. I’m currently reading “Mongrel Cities” by Leonie Sandercock. It was written in 2003 so it is dated but it was already addressing the fear and the Othering inspired by 9/11. I’m not that far in but already it’s talking about planning for communities that acknowledge differences as strengths. The author actually says about herself that she remains a hopeful theorist even when our visions of urban Utopia fail endlessly, that she seeks to keep going and try new things. She looks largely at the age of migration in the western world and shares her criticism and hopes of what our cities and societies can be. She’s a professor at UBC who leads the Indigenous planning concentration and she focuses on storytelling and narrative in planning practice. I fangirl over her (this is the planning program I’m trying to get into).

Alexis: The bible. The concept of a higher purpose and God is the only thing that gives me hope.

I’m part of a fundamental religious group. So we adhere to the bible. It’s our source of guidance. And everyone who bashes alternative lifestyles and hides behind the bible to justify their hate – they’re not acting like the Christ I know.

I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. I have gay friends. I have trans friends. I am friends with recovering addicts and people who choose to work in prostitution.

I believe in harm reduction and the freedom to do what you want/need to be happy.

If that includes God/the bible – great.

If not. That’s great too. I aim to imitate Jesus and his love (yup I know that sounds hokey). But he was kind and he showed love and didn’t condemn people.

I can tell you that if I didn’t believe in God, I would be an awful person who was extremely hopeless. Whether what I believe comes true or not, I’m kinder and happier. I feel hope. I’m not overwhelmed by what is in the media. It’s scary out there. But I would rather live and die with hope in my heart than believe that the world is going to implode at any minute.

Michelle: APTN, Aboriginal People’s Television Network – they aren’t perfect but at least give us a voice without colonial talking points

Patricia: Pod Save America. It’s written by Obama’s writers and communications team. I feel like they are intelligent, well informed, experienced voices who are able to read and critique what occurs in the media very logically. Also, they are sweary sometimes, which is necessary and awesome.

(Another) Katie: Not really hopeful per se and definitely not perfect, but I find when I’m overcome with existential dread that revisiting media from my childhood helps calm me down and cradle me. The Harry Potter franchise has been good in that regard – it’s like comfort food in book form for me.

(I have really enjoyed Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, a social justice-informed podcast that explores the Harry Potter books. And there’s research to support Katie’s love of returning to cherished media, as this Mary Sue article outlines. I won’t link to the study directly, because it’s called “The Temporal and Focal Dynamics of Volitional Reconsumption: A Phenomenological Investigation of Repeated Hedonic Experiences” and that sounds pretty dry, even to me. Okay, fine, I will. Here it is.)

Justine: Lately, I’ve been fascinated with Jay Z’s 4:44 roll out and the videos and footnotes he’s released. They’re beautifully made and really fascinating.

It gives me hope because a central theme throughout is that artists need to be in control of the process involving their artwork, which is really cool thinking that Tidal might operate more as an (elite) artist collective and inspire other streaming services to organize along similar lines.

Other than that, comedy is a still big one for me. Political comedy has been really great lately in calling bullshit, which is really validating. Personally, I recommend:

Lastly, for a feel good, hope for the future feeling, I recommend “Homecoming King” by Hasan Mihnaj (Netflix). It’s a really well done stand up that talks about his experiences growing up as an Indian American Muslim, and it’s really well done, and I found it really powerful.

Stasha: This page called Just Ravens on here. This lovely lady lives up north and shares photos and stories of her relationships with a group of ravens. Most recent one I liked was a raven waiting on her car for her to get off work, so the raven can hitch a ride on her side mirror and get some snacks. There are some treaty 7 people in the group talking about ravens that I know irl. So, everything about it just gives me hope and joy.